High above all the medley of kindreds and tongues, untrammelled by
national traditions, for he had outgrown the compass of any one nation,
invested with the glory of achievements in which the old bounds of the
possible seemed to fall away, stood in 324 the man Alexander. Was he a
man? The question was explicitly suggested by the report that the
Egyptian priest in the Oasis had hailed him in the god's name as the son
of Ammon. The Egyptians had, of course, ascribed deity by old custom to
their kings, and were ready enough to add Alexander to the list. The
Persians, on the other hand, had a different conception of the godhead,
and we have no proof that from them Alexander either required or
received divine honours. From the Greeks he certainly received such
honours; the ambassadors from the Greek states came in 323 with the
character of _theori_, as if approaching a deity (Arr. vii. 23, 2). It
has been supposed that in offering such worship the Greeks showed the
effect of "Oriental" influence, but indeed we have not to look outside
the Greek circle of ideas to explain it. As early as Aeschylus (_Supp._
991) the proffering of divine honours was a form of expression for
intense feelings of reverence or gratitude towards men which naturally
suggested itself--as a figure of speech in Aeschylus, but the figure had
been translated into action before Alexander not in the well-known case
of Lysander only (cf. the case of Dion, Plut. _Dio_, 29). Among the
educated Greeks rationalistic views of the old mythology had become so
current that they could assimilate Alexander to Dionysus without
supposing him to be supernatural, and to this temper the divine honours
were a mere form, an elaborate sort of flattery. Did Alexander merely
receive such honours? Or did he claim them himself? It would seem that
he did. Many of the assertions as to his action in this line do not
stand the light of criticism (see Hogarth, _Eng. Hist. Rev._ ii., 1887,
p. 317 seq.; Niese, _Historische Zeitschrift_, lxxix., 1897, p. 1,
seq.); even the explicit Statement in Arrian as to Alexander and the
Arabians is given as a mere report; but we have well-authenticated
utterances of Attic orators when the question of the cult of Alexander
came up for debate, which seem to prove that an intimation of the king's
pleasure had been conveyed to Athens.